


Never Pay the Reaper

by SouthSideStory



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BDSM, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Depression, Identity Porn, Identity Reveal, M/M, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Past Torture, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-06-30 06:38:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15746313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: The Winter Soldier is an enemy, then an ally, then a lover. He’s a mystery through it all, from his name to the face he keeps hidden. Later, Steve will see every sign he overlooked, every moment that should have made the Soldier’s identity obvious. He might wonder how he missed it, but he already knows. The Soldier couldn’t be Bucky, because Bucky has been dead for seventy years, and the possibility of his survival is too miraculous to consider. It’s the kind of dream that Steve no longer has enough hope to put any stock in, even when the truth is staring right at him. (Or: the Avengers contract the Winter Soldier to take down Hydra, and Steve Rogers falls in love with the same man twice.)





	1. Chapter 1

.

.

_“how strange it is, that after all that we are strangers again”_

\- Lang Leav -

.

.

Someone is in his apartment, and Steve doesn’t even realize it until he’s already wandered into the living room. The intruder stands in a corner, not so much hiding in the shadows as lounging there. Comfortable with the shroud of darkness, clearly unafraid of being found.

Steve figures that they’d be fighting by now if this man wanted to hurt him. “Can I help you?”

“So polite.” His voice is muffled, expressionless, free of any accent that Steve can discern.

When he steps in front of the window, moonlight bathes his masked face, and Steve reacts on instinct: he rushes the Winter Soldier and shoves him against the wall. Because this is the monster who murdered loyal SHIELD agents and almost killed him, who shot Natasha and nearly assassinated Fury. Even Johann Schmidt had nothing on the Soldier’s sheer, efficient brutality, and the last time they met, he fought like his sole purpose was to eliminate his target.

So what’s he doing here, in the middle of the night? The Soldier has been alone in Steve’s apartment, waiting to be noticed instead of attacking. It doesn’t make sense.

Steve shakes him and asks, “Who sent you?”

“No one,” he says.

Until tonight, Steve had never actually heard the Soldier speak. He was silent throughout their confrontations in the capital, mute and single-minded. It’s disconcerting to find that the specter of his dreams is more human than he expected.

“So you’re not Hydra anymore?” Steve asks.

“I was never Hydra,” the Soldier says.

There’s something in the pitch of his voice, even so quiet and carefully colorless, that reminds Steve of Bucky. Longing hits him in the gut, knocks the breath out of him like a suckerpunch. His grip tightens on the Soldier’s arms, one unforgiving metal, the other thick with hard muscle.

He should step away before he does something stupid—like rip that black muzzle off the Soldier, just to assure himself that his dead friend’s face isn’t hiding underneath it. (He should, but he doesn’t.)

“Then what are you doing here? Planning to finish the job?” Steve asks.

The Soldier makes a rough noise, and it takes Steve a moment to realize that it’s a laugh. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

Steve grabs the front of his shirt—long-sleeved, plain, much less conspicuous than his tactical gear—and yanks him closer. “Funny. You tried to kill me in D.C., but here I am, still alive.”

The Soldier stands almost as tall as Steve, but when he ducks his head, he suddenly seems much smaller. “That wasn’t personal,” he says. “You were my mission.”

Some halting, barely-checked emotion slips through his flat affect this time. Regret, Steve thinks. Maybe even shame.

That’s not enough, though, because their fight on the helicarrier had been the most vicious of Steve’s life. Even with his healing factor, it took a week to recover from the injuries that the Soldier dealt him—three gunshots, two stab wounds, four broken bones in his face, and a necklace of purple bruises.

That battle has joined the ranks of Steve’s worst memories: Peggy’s cries across the radio as he plummets into the ice, promising to teach him to dance; Bucky falling from the train, hand outstretched, reaching for help, but Steve is too slow to save him. For the first time since he woke up in this strange century, he has a new figure haunting his dreams. The Winter Soldier, metal fingers clenched around his throat, stealing his breath until the world goes black.

So one moment of remorse doesn’t go too far toward earning Steve’s good will.

“You nearly killed my closest friends, and you murdered more innocent people than you’ve probably bothered to count,” Steve says. “Excuse me if I take that personally.”

The Soldier tilts his chin up, pale eyes suddenly sharp, focused. There’s something achingly familiar about the way he’s looking at Steve, and he’s reminded again of Bucky.

It’s stupid, because there might be a passing resemblance between this man and his friend (as well as Steve can tell with the Soldier masked), but not enough to justify this reaction. Bucky was much slimmer, if built along the same lines, and he had far too much pride in his appearance to let his hair grow so long and ragged. It’s the eyes where Steve sees the most similarity—and the least. Same shape and color, more grey than blue, but the Winter Soldier’s gaze has none of Bucky’s spark, holds nothing playful or protective.

“Why are you here?” Steve asks, slowly and forcefully.

“You’re hunting down Hydra,” the Soldier says. “I want to help.”

“You expect me to buy that? We almost lost in D.C. because of you!” Steve steps away, takes a deep breath, and says, “Give me one good reason to believe you.”

The Soldier shoves Steve, pushing hard enough that he stumbles. “Hydra took everything from me,” he says, and even though his voice remains calm, for the first time he doesn’t sound so cold and unaffected. “Carved up my body and wiped my mind until there was nothing left.”

“Are you saying—Hydra forced you to fight for them?” Steve’s stomach falls as he asks the question, like he missed a step on ground that should have been familiar.

The Soldier doesn’t answer for a long moment. Then he nods. “I don’t even know what I am underneath their programming. Except for angry.”

His silver fingers flex, and the shifting plates make a grating sound. Unsettling, mechanical, it reminds Steve of their last fight. That same metallic noise, magnified and too-close, as the Soldier’s cybernetic hand choked the life from him.

“You need my reasons for wanting to help you? Strucker. List. Malick. Rumlow,” says the Soldier, and his soft words gain more power with each name he volunteers. “Every Hydra agent from the doctors to the politicians, the gunmen to the paper-pushers. I want them to pay. All of them.”

His eyes shine with a fury too righteous to be feigned, and Steve can’t help it. Maybe he’s every bit the fool that Tony says he is, but he thinks the Soldier is telling the truth.

.

.

“No goddamn way,” Sam says. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Possibly.”

Steve looks around the table, at this strange collection of people that he calls comrades. Tony smiles, Bruce frowns in his gently disapproving way, Clint yawns, and Natasha makes no expression at all.

He wonders how Thor would react, but there’s no use speculating. He can’t afford to set aside his responsibilities on Asgard until they get a solid lead on Loki’s scepter.

“Steve. This guy was trying to kill us three months ago.” Sam opens his hands, like he’s inviting anyone to start speaking sense. “What the hell makes you think we can trust him?”

“I didn’t say we should trust him. If he’s lying, he’s a Hydra mole, and if he’s being honest…” Steve hesitates, because there’s no kind way to call someone damaged. “If Hydra really did use the Soldier the way he says, he’s an unstable ally at best.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?” Clint takes a healthy swig from his thermos—which probably contains something stronger than coffee.

“Because Cap has a thing for brunettes?” Tony asks, without looking up from his tablet.

He’s wearing such a confident, shit-eating grin that Steve thinks Tony might _know_. Then he remembers that Tony always smiles like that, and he steadies himself enough to say, “Because he’s an unparalleled fighter, and without the full power of SHIELD to back us, we could use someone with his skills.”

“If his goals really do align with ours, the Winter Soldier isn’t an ally we can afford to turn away,” Natasha says.

She might be speaking in favor of Steve’s suggestion, but not because she wants to, and he appreciates her all the more for that.

“Exactly,” Steve says.

Bruce fidgets with his sleeve and hums, just barely shaking his head. “Seems like more trouble than he’s worth. What if he can’t be contained? We could have another D.C. on our hands.”

“People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” Tony sing-songs.

He’s still tapping away furiously on his tablet. Probably playing the stock market and designing a new suit and hacking something. Tony’s mind works on about ten different levels at once, and Steve’s too used to his brilliance to even by awed by it anymore.

“In this case, my glass house makes me the best suited to throw stones,” Bruce says. “We don’t know anything about the Soldier. Who he is, where he’s from, how extensive his enhancements are. Without more information, this is too risky.”

“Then we get more information,” Tony says, right as he taps his tablet.

Digital images and documents are projected to the space above the conference table. Photos from the destruction at D.C. Medical records that Steve recognizes as his own, from his seven-day hospitalization this spring. A series of reports in Russian, German, and English, rushing by too quickly to keep up with.

“What’s all this?” Sam asks, but he’s frowning like he already knows.

“Cap’s medical files, detailing exactly how badly the Winter Soldier kicked his ass,” Tony says. “Footage from the killing spree in Washington—speaking of which, next time a mass-murdering Nazi organization tries to take over the world, maybe call me in? Just a thought.”

He glares at Steve and Natasha, then looks around at everyone else. “Anyway, it’s mostly SHIELD and Hydra files that I’ve spent the last twenty minutes analyzing. Because Bruce is right: the Avengers don’t contract ex-assassins for help without digging up all the dirt we can find first.”

Bruce takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s not quite what I meant, but okay. And I thought you already scoured the Hydra files for details on the Winter Soldier? Why didn’t you turn up anything in May?”

“Because in May I was looking for the wrong things in the wrong places,” Tony says, like this should be obvious. “Nothing in Hydra’s files names the Winter Soldier, and none of their reports describe an agent with his capabilities and track record.”

He swipes through the projected items, types something, and English translations of the Russian and German documents overlay the originals. “But he’s not their agent, so of course they didn’t write about him that way. There’s a series of files spanning the last fifty years that refer to ‘the asset.’ They’re all about his—well, they’re called maintenance reports, actually.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, but he’s rarely been so disgusted. Whatever else the Winter Soldier is, he’s a human being, not a _thing_ to be maintained.

“The reports are full of torture strategies to keep him in line, mostly,” Tony says, “but there’s enough information about his arm buried in there to know it’s about the Winter Soldier and not some other victim.”

They fall silent as they skim through the files. The earliest information dates back to 1962, but it’s unclear whether the doctor who wrote this report had created the Soldier or inherited him. His true origins remain an enigma, but at least one mystery is solved: he appears to be in his prime because Hydra kept him in cryostasis between missions.

So he slept through most of the century on ice, just like Steve. It’s strange, to have something like that in common with a man he considered an enemy not long ago.

He doesn’t know the Winter Soldier from Adam, but these reports are still the most grueling things Steve has ever read. Clinical descriptions of torture and brainwashing, written with all the compassion and interest of a bored cook listing out the ingredients of a recipe.

_The asset became violent toward handlers. Non-compliance corrected with electroshock. 1000 V for twenty minutes sufficient to restore submission…_

_Annual stress test results confirm that the serum’s regenerative effects remain fully intact. Compared to the average recovery time for humans, the asset’s body heals faster from: subdermal hematomas by 95%; ulnar, femoral, and patella fractures by 85%; third-degree burns by 70%; incisions, lacerations, and abrasions by 90%..._

_Due to advanced healing factor and conditioned pain tolerance, the asset is no longer responsive to traditional disciplinary strategies. Sleep deprivation and isolation in the cryo chamber at -5 degrees Celsius are recommended to regain compliance, as he fears the cold…_

_The asset is only cleared for assignments with projected time frame of 48 hours or less. His superior cellular regeneration offsets the benefits of mental recalibration beyond this timeframe…_

_Typical preparatory methods have lost efficacy as the asset’s behavior grows more erratic. Euthanasia will be scheduled upon completion of Project Insight…_

Steve wonders if the Soldier knew his time was running out. That Hydra had planned to put him down like a dog once he carried out one last mission.

There’s more, each document somehow worse than the last, and Tony grows pale when they reach a description of the Soldier being waterboarded.

“This is enough,” Steve says. “Turn it off.”

He demands this for his own sake as much as for Tony’s. Bucky was captured by Hydra and held for weeks at the munitions factory Steve helped the 107th liberate, and although he never would talk about his time as a prisoner, it was obvious that he’d been tortured. Hurt in some of the same ways as the Winter Soldier, maybe (drowned, burned, beaten, and worse), and Steve can’t afford to think about that right now.

Silence in the conference room deepens after the projection disappears.

Sam is the first to break it. “Well shit,” he says. “Dude threw me off a helicarrier with only one working wing, and now I can’t even hate him.”

“He deserves justice for what Hydra did to him,” Bruce says. “But that doesn’t mean we should accept his help.”

“So Bruce votes no, and I vote yes,” Tony says. “Who else?”

Clint takes another drink of his probably-not-coffee, then says, “You just want to get your hands on that robot arm.”

Tony shrugs, but he still looks a little shook up. “You’re not wrong. Care to wager on what it’s made of? I’m guessing a titanium-alloy of some kind.”

Steve cuts through their conversation before they can start a betting pool on the makeup of the Soldier’s arm. “Natasha?” he asks. “What are you thinking?”

She smiles tightly. “That in twenty years in the field, I’ve been shot exactly twice, both times by the Winter Soldier. So when I say that I’d like to side with Bruce on this one, I really mean it.”

“But?” Bruce asks.

Natasha’s expression softens into something more genuine when she looks at him. “But we need skilled fighters if we want to take down Hydra. No risk, no reward.”

 _Three_ , Steve thinks. “Clint?”

“Poor bastard got brainwashed. God knows I can relate,” he says, smirking. “I say give him a chance.”

 _Four_. That’s it, that’s the majority Steve needed to approve their alliance with the Winter Soldier, but he looks to Sam anyway.

He shakes his head. “For the record, I think we should’ve listened to Bruce, but we’re outvoted. So when do we start?”

.

.


	2. Chapter 2

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.

Two nights later, Steve finds the Winter Soldier in his bedroom, looking at the photos on his side table. One is a still of the Howling Commandos from old propaganda footage, the other a headshot of Bucky in his Army uniform.

“If we’re going to work together, you can’t keep breaking into my house.”

“This isn’t a house,” the Soldier says. He traces a picture frame with his metal fingers. “This is a museum.”

He’s not exactly wrong, but that isn’t a truth Steve appreciates hearing.

The Soldier lays the photo of Bucky facedown on the table, and Steve has to restrain the urge to punch him. That wouldn’t be a good start to an alliance.

“My team agreed to bring you on,” he says. “You need to report to our headquarters tomorrow morning for a briefing. Eight o’clock.”

That gets the Soldier’s attention. He turns toward Steve and says, “I offered to help _you_. I didn’t say anything about the Avengers.”

“How exactly did you think that would work?” Steve asks. “The Avengers are taking down Hydra together, because it’s too big of a job for any of us alone. You must know that, or you wouldn’t even be here.”

The Soldier says, “Fine,” in a way that sounds like he isn’t fine with it at all.

Steve almost expects him not to show the next morning, but when he arrives at the briefing room at 7:50, he finds that the Soldier is already there. He’s standing in the corner, wearing the same tac gear he sported in D.C. Steve can’t figure out how he bypassed seven floors of Stark security and metal detectors wearing black leather and a mask, his bionic arm fully exposed, on proud display. At least his weapons are concealed.

Normally, Steve would pour himself a cup of coffee and grab a half-dozen donuts, but it feels strange to do something as normal as eating breakfast in front of a man who nearly beat him to death three months ago.

They stand in silence until eight, when the other Avengers start arriving. Natasha sits on the window sill, which might look casual, but he knows that she wants to have the best vantage point in the room, ready to attack the Winter Soldier at any moment if he proves to be a threat. Clint perches beside Nat and chats with her about hitting up their shawarma place after this meeting is over, as if an ex-enemy isn’t standing in their midst.

“I guess nobody’s sitting at the table today,” Bruce says mildly. He pours himself a cup of coffee, then ruins it with about five spoonfuls of sugar.

Sam stands next to Steve, eyeing the Soldier like he expects him to draw a gun at any moment.

Tony strolls in twenty minutes after eight, as unrepentantly late as usual. He waves his hand in the Soldier’s direction and says, “Hey, Darth Vader, can’t you take off that mask? You’re probably scaring Cap. He still has nightmares about the beatdown you gave him in D.C.”

“Tony,” Steve says, in his best Disappointed American Icon voice.

“What? It’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“Says the man who flies around in a red and gold suit,” mutters the Soldier.

Tony throws up his hands. “It jokes!”

“How about we don’t call the man who’s been held against his will for fifty years _it_ ,” he says to Tony. He keeps his voice down, but from the way the Soldier stiffens, he thinks he overheard.

Tony winces. “Right.”

Steve decides that getting down to business might be the only way they escape this briefing without fatalities. “Intel on a Hydra cell in Mexico City has surfaced—”

“Surfaced?” asks the Soldier. “Information like that doesn’t spring out of nowhere.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Steve says. “But you don’t need to know where it came from.”

_Not until we can trust you. Not until you’ve earned some loyalty._ He doesn’t say these things, but he’s sure that he doesn’t have to for the Soldier to understand them.

He expects resistance. Some kind of argument, maybe threats or even a fight, but the Soldier only sits quietly while he briefs the team on the Hydra group in Mexico. When someone asks him a direct question, he answers, if tersely, and he agrees to whatever is required of him. Steve has to wonder if there’s any order he wouldn’t be comfortable carrying out.

It’s a straightforward mission: rescue the civilians that Hydra has been trafficking for funds, kill or capture the operatives, recover any data they can.

Natasha and Sam hang back after the meeting is over, but Steve tells them to go on. He nods toward the Soldier and says, “I need to talk to him. Alone.”

Sam and Nat share a look that annoys him, like they think he can’t handle himself, but they leave just the same.

Once the conference room is empty, Steve walks over to the Soldier. Before he can consider how weak it makes him look, he crosses his arms over his middle, protecting the places where he’d been shot.

“We’ll be fighting side by side, so we might as well get some things out in the open,” Steve says. “I don’t trust you, and I don’t see that changing soon. But you’re supporting my team, putting your life on the line to stop Hydra, and that’s worth my respect—and my gratitude. I’m not going to have any problems working with you. Can you say the same?”

The Soldier frowns, pale gaze flickering over Steve.

“You’re afraid,” he says, like he’s reporting the weather. “You want to know if some part of me still thinks of you as my target.”

Steve would like to deny it. Most people seem to expect him to be fearless these days, but it’s not true. No enemy has ever challenged him like the Soldier, and almost dying under his hands confirmed all the worries that have plagued him since he woke up in this strange new century: he’s irrelevant, outmatched, and utterly alone.

“Afraid?” Steve asks. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

The Soldier doesn’t answer, but he looks away, and there it is again. Shame settled in the lines around his eyes.

Steve should say, _It’s not your fault._ The Soldier didn’t choose to hurt him, or anyone else, but he feels a phantom ache around his throat, the ghost of metal fingers choking him, and he can’t make himself say the words.

Instead, he asks, “What’s your name?”

The Soldier’s left arm flexes, and the metal plates shift, recalibrating. “I haven’t had a name in a long time.”

Hydra’s reports warned that, if the Soldier’s mind wasn’t consistently wiped, the brain damage he’d suffered would likely heal, his memories would resurface, and he’d turn against his handlers. Now that he’s had months to recover, he probably knows who he is, but Steve supposes that the Soldier has the right to keep his identity to himself if that’s what he wants. So much has been taken from him; he deserves to have something of his own, even if it’s only his name.

“Then what do you want to be called?” Steve asks.

“‘Soldier’ is fine.”

“Look, it doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to. Just—”

Something real. Something human. So that he can look at this man’s masked face and his mechanical arm, the weapon that almost killed him, and see a _person_.

“You pick then.” The Soldier sounds frustrated now, not so reserved after all. “Who do I look like to you?”

_Bucky_ , he thinks. _You look like Bucky._

Steve almost says it, but then the Soldier pokes him, a quick jab to the abdomen, precisely where he’d been gutshot. Under the cold touch of those metal fingers, the spot feels tender again. Steve catches his wrist and squeezes as hard as he can. If this was a normal arm and not a piece of Hydra tech, it would have snapped.

“I’m just trying to make peace before this mission,” Steve says. “If you don’t want that, fine, but keep your hands to yourself.”

The Soldier jerks his wrist out of his grasp. “Whatever you say, Captain.”

.

.

It’s selfish and short-sighted, but Steve almost hopes that the mission to Mexico City goes badly. That the Soldier proves too reckless and insubordinate to depend on in a fight. Bringing him on board was a gamble, one that Steve pushed on his team, and now he doesn’t even know why he did it. Because he’d be such an advantage in the fight against Hydra? Or because the Soldier reminds him of Bucky?

Steve lies awake at four o’clock in the morning, telling himself that he made the right call for the right reasons. His choice had nothing to do with the Soldier’s eyes, or the pitch of his voice, or the way he tilts up his chin when he says something challenging or smartass.

_Bucky is dead._ Steve wants to make himself say it out loud, but he can’t. Trying to speak those words takes him back to the train, watching his best friend fall a thousand feet. Not strong enough, not fast enough, not good enough when it counts. Weaker than he ever was as a crippled kid in Brooklyn. Helpless.

Bucky is seventy years gone, but to Steve it seems like yesterday, and whoever said that time heals all wounds is full of shit.

.

.

Clint breaks into the security center and disables the the base’s defenses while Natasha steals files from an office hidden three levels underground. Tony takes out the east wing of the base, and Steve and the Soldier tackle the west. Then Clint and Nat double around to help Sam rescue and evacuate civilians. Bruce stands by, ready to help if they need him, but Steve told him to sit this one out unless things went south. He didn’t have to explain why; Bruce knows better than anyone what a danger he can be, and there are too many of Hydra’s victims here to risk unleashing the Hulk.

The Soldier fights with the same savage efficiency he displayed in D.C. No effort wasted, no punches pulled. When Steve gives him an order, he listens immediately, almost startlingly obedient. If he hadn’t just watched the Soldier rip out a Hydra operative’s throat with his metal fingers, Steve might even think him docile.

He’s fighting four goons at once when he hears a shot right behind him, then the boneless, crumpling sound of a body hitting the concrete floor.

“Thanks!” Steve shouts, and it feels almost like old times. Breaking into some dank Hydra hideout with the Commandos, Bucky watching his six while he barrells through enemies.

The Soldier strangles one Hydra lackey and kicks another toward Steve, who knocks him out with a swift blow to the head. He disables three more within a minute, and sends another toward the Soldier, who shoots the agent between her eyes.

They fight with a harmony that he’s seen from dancers, the kind of coordination and symmetry that it took months of practice for Steve to develop with his teammates. It’s almost like their first battle in D.C., their skills so evenly matched that they move in sync, except now they’re working together instead of against each other.

It might be the first time that Steve has truly felt at home in this century.

.

.

The Soldier remains quiet and distant, as much a mystery as ever. Relentless and ruthless against Hydra, dependable in battle if not loyal to the Avengers. He supports the team, but he doesn’t go out of his way to help any of them out of difficult spots—except for Steve.

He doesn’t see this at first, but when Tony drags the team out for drinks after a mission, Natasha leans into his space and says, “Tell me you’ve noticed.”

The club Tony took them to is dark, crowded, and uncomfortably modern, all brushed steel and sleek glass. An electronic beat pulses beneath everything, so loud and frenetic that it barely sounds like music to Steve. He could pretend he didn’t hear her, because he knows a trap when he sees one.

Steve leans back in the booth and says, “All right, I’ll bite. Noticed what?”

“That the Soldier likes you,” Natasha says.

She smiles as she sips her cosmopolitan. She’s drinking for show tonight. When Natasha is drinking to get drunk she orders top-shelf vodka.

“Oh, yeah,” Steve says. “He just loves me. Must be why he shot me so many times.”

Natasha gestures like she wants to wave away his stupidity. “Don’t be petty. He was brainwashed.”

She’s right, of course, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. He fiddles with his club soda. He hasn’t told his team that he’s immune to alcohol, so in a way, his drink is a performance too. Steve lets them think he never drinks because he’s too straight-laced for it.

“Pay attention next time we’re working,” Natasha says. “You’ll see what I mean. He protects you.”

Tony throws himself into the booth and wraps an arm around Steve’s shoulders. “What are we talking about?”

“Nothing—”

“That the Winter Soldier has a crush on Cap,” says Natasha.

“Really?” Tony asks. “I didn’t get, you know, the impression that Fifty First Dates bats for the other team.”

Steve ducks out of Tony’s embrace. “Maybe he bats for both.”

“Cap knows what bisexuality is!”

Tony looks shocked and proud, which only annoys him more.

“Believe it or not, folks who weren’t straight existed in the Forties, and not everyone had a problem with it.”

Just most people, but he doesn’t need to give Tony more reason to think he’s a relic.

.

.

Steve has two kinds of nights: haunted and sleepless. He either dreams of ugly things until his own tossing and turning wakes him, or he wiles away the dark hours on meaningless distractions, too edgy and afraid of nightmares to find any rest.

Tonight he watches a Christmas movie that Clint recommended, eats four grilled cheese sandwiches, and reads a series of melodramatic articles riddled with advertisements on his phone. Clickbait, Tony calls it.

By dawn, Steve is exhausted and bored out of his mind, but he’s still too wired for sleep. He lies in bed anyway, eyes closed against the wan sunlight that’s creeping through the gaps in his blinds. Maybe it’s best that he can’t sleep. He’d just dream of something violent anyway. Crashing into the ocean, or Bucky strapped to Zola’s table, or the Winter Soldier strangling him into darkness.

Steve turns onto his stomach, buries his face in a too-soft pillow, and tries not to think about any of it. Promising to dance with Peggy. Bucky’s screams as he fell from the train. The lost look in his eyes when Steve found him at the factory, restrained like a rabid animal.

It’s almost worse to remember the good times, though. Sharing that coldwater apartment in Red Hook, sleeping on shitty cots in the world’s smallest room. Their beds forced so close together that they could reach out and hold hands if they chose to. Not that they ever did, of course.

He’s crying before he realizes it, crying over someone the rest of the world has forgotten, and maybe that’s the worst part. Nobody else remembers Bucky, so he has to mourn alone.

.

.

Steve doesn’t mean to pay attention—because when he sees the Soldier, his focus should only be on their missions—but he can’t help but notice that Natasha is right about him. He watches out for Steve, jumps in to help him when he doesn’t have to.

Three months after the Soldier joins the Avengers on their hunt for Hydra, he takes a knife to the shoulder protecting Steve. He doesn’t make a sound, and the agent who attacked dies a moment later, neck snapped like a twig between his metal fingers.

He rips the knife out of his right shoulder and keeps fighting, like the wound isn’t even there.

“Get back to the jet!” Steve shouts, but the Soldier ignores him. “You’re injured. I’ve got this handled.”

He throws his shield, and it knocks down two operatives before ricocheting off the wall and back into his hands.

“Sure. That’s why you almost ended up with a skewered heart,” says the Soldier. “Because you’ve got this handled.”

He kicks the last Hydra agent into the wall. The man slides to the floor and doesn’t get up.

Steve grabs the Soldier by his metal arm and yanks him around. “Go to the jet and wrap up your wound. That’s an order.”

“Fuck off,” says the Soldier. “You’re not my handler.”

He flinches, like he still expects disobedience to be punished with pain.

Before Steve can figure out how to answer being told to fuck off by one of his men (and when did he start thinking of the Soldier as _his_?) another unit of Hydra operatives bursts into the basement, firing indiscriminately.

He ducks down behind a steel desk, pulling the Soldier with him, and says, “Well I guess you’re sticking around.”

“You’ll be thankful for it. I’m a better shot than you.”

As if to prove his point, the Soldier peeks over the top of the desk and kills three agents with precise, perfect headshots.

Later, on the jet, the Soldier cuts himself out of his vest and quietly stitches his wound. Steve tries not to stare, but he can’t stop stealing glances at the juncture where the Soldier’s metal arm meets flesh. Scars radiate from the seam in pockmarks, ridges, and furrows. The ugly evidence of Hydra’s abuse branded on his skin.

He knots the last stitch, cybernetic hand perfectly steady.

“Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” says the Soldier, and it’s such a _Bucky_ sort of remark that Steve has to look away from him.

“Sorry.”

It’s not his business, but he asks, “Do you usually scar? You don’t have any other marks.”

The Soldier keeps stitching, but his voice is harder when he says, “Don’t play stupid. You read Hydra’s files. You know what they did.”

He doesn’t have to say the rest. That if he scarred, he’d be covered from head to toe.

Tony, who was apparently eavesdropping, points to the Soldier’s left arm and says, “It’s the continuous stress on your skin, right? Your body might regenerate, but even a supersoldier-shoulder—wow, that’s a tongue-twister—isn’t built to support, what, eighty pounds of titanium-alloy? So your skin keeps tearing, over and over again. You have scars because it never has a chance to really heal.”

It’s hard to tell what the Soldier is thinking with most of his face covered, but he sounds wary when he asks, “What of it?”

Tony takes a seat on the floor across from him. “Look, don’t get me wrong, that prosthetic is a beautiful piece of machinery, but I could do better. Much better.”

The Soldier doesn’t react in any obvious way, but Steve sees the precise moment when he shuts down. His eyes go empty and cold, and whoever was there a second ago, he’s gone.

“You’re not touching me,” he says flatly. “That isn’t our deal.”

Tony holds up his hands. “I’m only putting an offer on the table. Just keep in mind that your arm is about fifty years overdue for a major upgrade, and unlike Hydra, I’d build you a prosthetic that doesn’t cause you constant pain. But hey, you wanna tough it out for no good reason? Totally up to you.”

“Thank you, Tony,” Steve says. He uses a tone of voice that he hopes translates to, _Go away_.

It must, because Tony leaves them alone.

The Soldier tries to wrap his right shoulder, but it’s slow work, and Steve can see his stab wound bleeding around its fresh stitches.

“Do you want some help?” he asks.

The Soldier shakes his head. “I can do my own maintenance.”

“First aid,” Steve corrects.

When the Soldier looks at him blankly, he says, “Maintenance is for machines. First aid is for people.”

He holds out his hand, and slowly, almost shyly, the Soldier gives him the roll of gauze.

Steve wraps his injury, and because he hasn’t said it yet, he whispers, “Thanks for protecting me.”

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love it if you took a moment to let me know what you think. :)


	3. Chapter 3

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After three straight nights of insomnia, Steve has eaten all the snacks in his apartment, watched five movies from his list, and defaced the backs of all his bills with sketches. No skylines or still life or dancing monkeys, just the same person, over and over: Bucky, fifteen and lanky, only starting to grow into his frame; Bucky, war-weary, with stubbled cheeks and shadowed eyes; Bucky, biting his lip, cheeks flushed, hair a mess from some dame grabbing it. Bucky, drawn on every white, blank page that Steve can find.

Sometime between one and two o’clock, the sketches change. He starts drawing Bucky with longer hair, overgrown like it used to get between trips to the barber, then down to his shoulders—

Steve stops himself from putting that awful black mask on his best friend’s face, but it’s a close thing.

When he drags himself back to bed, he jerks off, thinking about the way Bucky smelled after a night out, like whiskey and cheap cologne and sex. How he’d sometimes touch himself when he thought Steve was asleep, breaths shallow but labored, so quiet until the end, when he’d choke on a cry in the back of his throat.

Sometimes he wondered whether Bucky was really trying to hide it. Maybe if he worked up the courage to offer, he could have helped, instead of lying four feet away, clenching his jaw and keeping perfectly still, so he wouldn’t make noise or come in his pants. It’s no use thinking about that now, though, because it’s too late, and Bucky is gone, Bucky is—

Steve turns onto his side, hurting and unfulfilled, cock still hard in his hand, but there’s no use in trying to get off now. These days, the only thing that feels any good to imagine is Bucky, but those fantasies are more likely to make him cry than make him come.

.

.

The Soldier usually disappears right after a mission, but this time he hurries straight to the showers. It’s not difficult to guess why. He’s covered in blood, soaked in it, red splatters staining half his new suit (which looks remarkably like his old, Hydra-issued gear). The rest of the team changes into civvies and gets the hell out of the Tower, but Steve stays behind, waiting, to make sure the Soldier is fine.

A full hour passes, and that’s all Steve can take before his nerves drive him into the showers. He hears running water, sees steam drifting from the stall at the end. If the Soldier had shared his name, Steve would call it out now, but he didn’t.

He can hear movement under the rush of water, so he knows that the Soldier is fine, but curiosity urges him to yank back the curtain anyway. All he needs is one good look at his face—

The Soldier stands under the spray, hands braced against the tile wall, head bowed. He freezes when Steve rips open the curtain, the powerful muscles of his back and shoulders tensing. Every inch of him looks poised for flight, but he doesn’t move.

That bloody uniform lies crumpled around his feet, and the water blushes pink as it runs down the drain.

“You need something?” the Soldier asks sharply. “Besides the free show?”

“I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have—”

Steve has never run away from anything in his life, but he runs now. Hurries out of the showers, then the Tower, and speeds all the way home.

He’s angry with himself, but when he can’t sleep, it doesn’t stop him from imagining the Soldier’s body under hot water. All flushed skin, hard muscle, lethal machinery. Nothing about that metal arm should be appealing, because it’s one more abuse that Hydra inflicted on a victim, but Steve finds is strangely beautiful. Sculpted and strong, like the man it’s attached to, and he knows exactly how powerful it is. He understands, very intimately, how much damage the Soldier can inflict.

That shouldn’t be appealing either, but it is, and Steve realizes with a jolt that his desire for Bucky isn’t the only thing fueling his interest in the Soldier. It’s also the memory of being hurt by those mismatched hands, held down and battered and strangled.

Steve closes his eyes and grasps his cock. Lets himself imagine being fondled between blows, pushed down on the bed and fucked. The Soldier slapping his face, yanking his hair, choking him. Metal fingers tightening around his throat with every thrust, but he begs for more, and the Soldier gives him everything he asks for—

After he comes, Steve lies on his back, too pleasantly tired to bother cleaning up. It’s such a relief to feel plain pleasure without the sting of grief muddling it, and he sleeps through the night for the first time in weeks.

.

.

The Soldier has stopped sneaking into his apartment. Maybe he listened to Steve’s warning last summer, or maybe he just doesn’t feel the need for breaking and entering anymore. Missions bring them into each other’s orbit at least once a week, and Steve supposes that if the Soldier has anything to say to him, he has plenty of opportunity now.

So he probably ought to be surprised when he finds the Soldier lurking in his bedroom at one o’clock in the morning. He ought to be, but he isn’t.

He’s wearing threadbare jeans and two layers of thermal shirts. He’d look normal, although lightly dressed for December in New York, if his face wasn’t masked.

“Maybe I should just give you a key,” Steve says—and it scares him a little, because he’s not really joking.

The Soldier pulls a brass key from his pocket and says, “I stole your spare in July.”

“What?” Steve asks. “Why?”

He shrugs. “Seemed easier than breaking in every time I needed to see you. And just a tip: don’t leave your spare key under the goddamn welcome mat.”

“Thanks. I’ll be sure to take advice from a serial home invader,” Steve says.

He sits on the edge of his bed and tries not to think about last night. He finally broke down and worked his fingers between his legs, jerking off as he sat in this very spot, pretending it was the Soldier inside him.

Steve grips the mattress, breathes as evenly as he can manage. He prays that nothing of his thoughts shows on his face right now.

“Technically I’m just trespassing. It’d be home invasion if I intended to steal your shit. Or hurt you.”

The Soldier looks at him, gaze sliding down his body—unapologetic, appraising—and the heat behind it sends a flush crawling up the back of Steve’s neck. Maybe Natasha’s outlandish theory isn’t so outlandish after all, and he isn’t alone in this.

“Give me something to call you,” Steve says.

He needs to know a name for the Soldier, a real name, so that he can stop thinking of him as a product of Hydra. So that he can stop wishing he was Bucky.

“Call me whatever you want,” the Soldier says. He steps closer, until he’s standing right between Steve’s legs.

“I can’t name you. That’s something you should decide for yourself.”

The Soldier grabs his hair and tilts his head back, yanking hard enough to make his scalp sting, a small violence that goes straight to Steve’s cock.

The metal fingers that encircle his throat are gentle, but the Soldier sounds irritated when he says, “Always so stubborn.”

If he had any sense, he’d be terrified, and he figures that’s what the Soldier is trying to do. Maybe he hopes that reminding Steve of their fight on the helicarrier will scare him off, put a stop to whatever fragile thing is sparking between them right now.

“You want to hurt me?” Steve asks. “Go ahead. I’ll let you.”

The Soldier’s grip on his throat loosens, then disappears, but breathing easier isn’t the comfort it should be.

It’s confusing, to want to be fucked by a stranger who’s shown him more brutality than kindness. This is probably the sort of thing he should be ashamed of, but Steve doesn’t bother with dissecting his desires these days. He spent too many years feeling guilty and afraid of what he wanted, and after he woke up in a new century, he only regretted being such a coward.

If he could go back to the war, he’d kiss Peggy sooner. Or if he could revisit the summer he turned nineteen, when he realized that he loved his best friend in the wrong way, he’d tell Bucky the truth.

Steve’s hands tremble as he shrugs out of his leather jacket.

The Soldier’s eyes are hungry, his pupils growing huge as he watches Steve fumble with the line of blue buttons down his shirtfront.

“You’re shaking.”

“Well, I’m nervous,” Steve says. He smiles to take the edge off his words. “It’s been awhile.”

He jumps when the Soldier caresses his bare belly, then blushes, because he’s embarrassed, both to be touched and by his own skittishness. Steve can feel his pulse racing under his fevered skin, shallow breaths coming too fast, the shivers that radiate through his whole body.

“You’ve never been with anyone, have you?” the Soldier asks.

He sounds almost sad, and Steve can’t take that, can’t tolerate pity any better now than he could as a scrawny kid in Brooklyn.

“So what?” he asks. “I’m tired of waiting for—”

_The right partner_ , he almost says, but that wish is too personal to share with a stranger.

Steve unbuckles his belt, and the Soldier just stares, his gaze greedy, making no move to participate, and what if he’s read this all wrong? God, Steve hopes he looks braver than he feels, because he thinks his heart might beat right out of his chest.

The Soldier pushes him down, turns him over, and pins him to the bed with the weight of his body. “You’re not fooling me,” he says.

His voice is rough and muffled through the mask, but beautifully close, and he sounds like Bucky. Except, Steve thinks he might not remember right. So many years apart have weathered his recollection of Bucky’s voice, and now he’s probably hearing it in the Soldier’s because that’s what he desires more than anything.

“I’m not gonna do anything until you tell me what you want,” the Soldier says. He sounds steady, authoritative, even though he’s shaking as much as Steve now.

The Soldier deserves better than this, and Steve shouldn’t let it happen. But he sounds so much like Bucky.

Steve closes his eyes, so he doesn’t have to see where he is, this twenty-first century apartment that still feels foreign. In the darkness, he could almost be home.

“Please.”

The Soldier nuzzles at the back of Steve’s neck with his masked mouth and whispers, “C’mon, ask for it.”

_Fuck me_ sounds so obscene that he can’t bring himself to demand it out loud, and the Soldier would laugh if he asked to make love.

“Use me,” he says. “Use me however you want.”

He hopes the Soldier takes him at his word, because then he won’t feel so guilty about using him back.

Steve hears the Soldier unbuckling his belt, the rustle of clothes as he drops his pants. Then he feels his own jeans and briefs being dragged down his thighs, and he opens his legs. Steve holds his breath, because this has to hurt, there’s no way it won’t—

“Hold still,” the Soldier says.

Steve ignores him and thrusts against the mattress, already so close that he could go off any second. He feels on fire where the Soldier’s fingers dig into his hips, and the need to be touched, to be filled, is overbearing. “Aren’t you gonna—you know—”

“What, you think I’ll fuck you dry?” the Soldiers asks. His grip tightens enough to bruise, and that alone nearly sends Steve over the edge. “Jesus Christ, you really don’t know anything, do you?”

Depending on how you count it, Steve is either twenty-eight or ninety-six, but regardless, it’s humiliating that he’s a grown man who’s never done this. Being ridiculed for it would probably kill his arousal if he wasn’t wound so tight.

“I’m not ignorant,” Steve whispers, because he isn’t. Inexperienced isn’t the same thing as innocent or stupid. “I know what lube is, thanks.”

The Soldier grinds against him and says, “So you just didn’t expect me to take care of you right. That about it?”

Steve takes a breath to protest, but the Soldier pushes two fingers between his lips and orders him to suck. When he does, Steve tastes something sharp and chemical on his skin. Gunpowder, he thinks. Just as he starts to gag, the Soldier jerks his hand away, and those thick fingers are pressing between his legs, wet with his own spit.

Then he feels it, that fullness he’s been craving. Stretched open, overwhelmed. The Soldier barely has to do any work, because Steve rocks back on his fingers, and it’s too good to believe, almost painful in the sweetest way. A little more, and he’s going to come all over his bed.

The Soldier pulls away, and Steve groans, suddenly empty and aching with the loss of that touch. So close to finishing that he shudders and reaches down to rub himself.

The Soldier flips him onto his back, grabs his wrists, and pins them to his sides. “No. I’m not done with you yet.”

There isn’t a chance in hell that he can break his right arm out of that titanium grip, but Steve wrangles his left hand free and bucks up against the Soldier, cups his masked cheek—

“ _Don’t._ ” The Soldier cringes away, eyes squeezed shut. “Don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry.” Steve holds up his free hand to show that he doesn’t mean any harm. “Won’t do it again. I promise.”

The Soldier hisses something in Russian, flinches, and ducks his head like he’s embarrassed.

Then he stares at Steve’s raised hand, scowling. “Can I tie you up?”

This isn’t smart, but the Soldier sounds nervous, almost afraid, so Steve nods anyway. Lets him string up his hands above his head, so that they’re wrapped together and bound to the iron headboard with some kind of wire. Steve really doesn’t want to consider the reason he carries around a thing like that.

The Soldier makes quick work of his clothes, yanking off what he can and cutting away the rest with a combat knife. It looks vaguely familiar, but not like the weapons he’s favored in battle for the last few months, and Steve wonders, somewhat distantly, whether it’s one of the knives he used in D.C.

The Soldier could be undressing him with the same blade he stabbed him with, and if he had any shame left, he’d probably feel guilty for finding that idea so strangely gratifying. Maybe he just wants to be hurt, and he knows he can trust the Soldier to do that.

Once he’s naked, the Soldier leaves the bed and starts rifling through the bedside table and dresser drawers.

A startled laugh breaks the heavy silence, and Steve feels himself blush down to his belly, because the Soldier just found the star-spangled bottle of lube that Tony sent him for his last birthday.

“That was a gag gift!” Steve says. “I’ve never opened it.”

“Sure,” the Soldier says, even though he’s tearing the plastic wrap off the bottle, and he has to know that Steve is telling the truth.

The Soldier slicks up his cock, and then he’s on top of Steve, guiding himself between his open thighs. He buries his muzzled face against Steve’s neck and whispers, “If you’re not sure about this, you better say something.”

The Soldier sounds broken, but he holds himself steady, still, waiting for Steve to respond. The best answer he can give, when his throat is closed too tightly to speak, is to wrap his legs around the Soldier’s waist.

He’s right, it does hurt, but that isn’t what scares him. Being possessed like this, opened up for the Soldier’s pleasure, makes him feel more exposed than the act itself.

He goes slowly, thrusts gentle and shallow, but that isn’t what Steve wants, and it’s undercutting the whole point of this. He says, “More,” and the Soldier fucks him deeper, harder. That’s exactly what he needs, to feel so much that he can’t think, can’t worry.

Steve hears the Soldier’s sharp pants and his own moans, the creak of mattress springs, his headboard thumping against the wall. The sloppy, rhythmic sound of wet flesh slapping together, pulling away, drawing together again. They don’t talk, and can’t kiss, not with the Soldier’s mouth caged behind a mask. There’s nothing intimate about this, being fucked by a man he barely knows, but it feels so good that Steve almost doesn’t care. Each thrust sends little shock waves down his spine, wringing needful noises from him that he has no willpower to swallow.

But he doesn’t know the Soldier’s name, and it’s such a far cry from what he always hoped for, when he imagined doing this with someone he loved. He thinks of Peggy, how she’d be as fierce and no-nonsense in bed as she was out of it, and Bucky—God, Bucky would’ve teased him so bad, poked fun at his ignorance without making him feel less-than for it, called him “punk” between kisses.

_This isn’t right_ , Steve thinks, and he doesn’t quite realize that he’s staring at the old photo of Bucky until the Soldier knocks it off the bedside table.

“Quit looking over there,” he orders, and now he sounds angry and raw, voice jagged around the edges. “Look at me.”

Steve tries to twist out from under the Soldier, to rip his hands free, but the wire must be reinforced with something even supersoldiers can’t tear through without leverage, and the way he’s tied will cut his wrists to ribbons before he ever breaks it. How could he have been so goddamn stupid?

“Stop,” Steve says, panic crawling up his throat, because he doesn’t have much faith that the Soldier will listen—and, Christ, what was the thinking? He shouldn’t have done this, he shouldn’t have—

But the Soldier pulls out of him immediately, grabs his knife, and saws through the wire keeping him bound.

Steve’s hands fall free, and now he’s shaking, too mixed up to think straight. Angry, heartbroken, needy, afraid. His arms feel numb and unsteady, his cock painfully hard, but he scrambles off the bed anyway. Picks Bucky’s picture out of the frame’s shattered glass and looks it over, searching for any imperfections. This is the original photo from Bucky’s SSR file, and he says, “Thank God,” when he sees that it isn’t torn.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I didn’t—I’m sorry.” The Soldier grabs at his long hair, then wraps his right arm around himself. “You thought I wasn’t gonna stop. That I’d—”

He doesn’t speak the ugly word that they’re both thinking.

“I wasn’t sure,” Steve says. He places Bucky’s picture on the table. Gentle, reverent; this is all he has left.

“You must think I’m some kind of monster.” The Soldier rolls his left shoulder and flexes his hand, staring down at the metal prosthetic like he wishes he could rip it off.

“I don’t think that,” Steve says quickly. “I don’t think anything. I don’t know you.”

The Soldier stands, fixes his clothes, and asks, without looking up, “Then why’d this even happen?”

The answer is sad and weak, but Steve owes the Soldier honesty. “I’m lonely, and you—” He gestures at Bucky’s picture. “You remind me of him.”

He expects the Soldier to be offended, but his voice is carefully neutral when he asks, “I do?”

“Yeah. The way you move, sometimes, and your eyes are like his. Same color, same everything, except—well, you look like you might be older than Bucky ever got to be.” Steve scrubs his hands over his face, trying to keep it together. “But it’s your voice more than anything else. I’d swear it’s the same. God, I’m probably just losing my mind. It’s been so long since he died, and—I’m sorry, you can’t want to hear this.”

“It’s fine.”

The Soldier touches his cheek, and Steve feels vulnerable all of a sudden. They’re almost eye to eye, standing like this, but the Soldier is fully dressed again and Steve is still naked.

He ducks away. “No, it’s not.”

The Soldier catches him and cups his face between his hands. One warm and human, the other cold, mechanical.

“I’ve told you twice already: you can call me whatever you want.”

It’s wrong and selfish, so unfair that Steve will probably hate himself tomorrow, but he lets the Soldier finish what they started. Only this time, he tells him to go slow, to whisper sweet lies, and it feels so good, so real, that for a moment he can believe it’s Bucky on top of him.

.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm back! Sorry for the long delay, folks. Life has been pretty wild lately, but things are finally settling down. 
> 
> If you have a moment to comment, I'd love to hear what you thought of this chapter! :)


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